


aftermath

by lucidnightmares



Category: Dangan Ronpa: Trigger Happy Havoc
Genre: Angst, Character Study, Depressing, Gen, Major V3 Endgame Spoilers, No Dialogue, Post-Canon, Post-Dangan Ronpa 1, Post-Game(s), Short One Shot, day late Kirigiri birthday fic, no happy ending
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-07
Updated: 2020-10-07
Packaged: 2021-03-07 17:01:08
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 689
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26871064
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lucidnightmares/pseuds/lucidnightmares
Summary: Kyouko Kirigiri, and her life post season one.
Comments: 2
Kudos: 8





	aftermath

When she first wakes up, she was the only one not crying.

Maybe it was just not part of the personality that Team Dangan Ronpa had so eloquently designed, perfected and detailed, but she didn’t weep. Kyouko Kirigiri simply did not cry, did not mourn.

She was a puzzle piece, she figured eventually, dawning the hospital gown that the nurses had given her, and the others were the same. She was not a main piece, nobody really was, but she would be immortalized anyway. Just like every other puzzle.

She wonders, distantly, if her father’s skull was a puzzle piece as well.

/

When they first invite her back, she nearly laughs and spits in their faces. But, Kyouko Kirigiri does not do that either. Maybe, the old her, whose name they told her but she never bothered to remember, would’ve, maybe if she had regained that part of her post-simulation.

Instead, she nods, and accepts in the invite back. So did the others, she soon learns.

She almost, just almost, a wish just barely grazing her finger tips, wants to simply not show up, just not go. But it isn’t as easy as that, she learns, and ties her hair into a ponytail to prepare for the audition.

/

Season 2 comes, eventually. She knows at least that part was inevitable, Dangan Ronpa was too popular, too famous, not to have a sequel. Naegi calls her when it first airs, and she tells her co-star, calm, cool, collected, that she doesn’t care. She does not snap or go off, or do something one of the other participants did.

Because, as she’s come to conclude many times now, that is not what Kyouko Kirigiri does. She doesn’t get angry.

She doesn’t fight back.

/

Dangan Ronpa gets another, and another, and another season, until she’s lost count, and until Naegi doesn’t even bother calling her to tell her about it anymore. 

Maybe partially because everybody knows what Dangan Ronpa is at this point, knows when the next season is going to air, and of course, they know what some of the new contestants will look like, because Team Dangan Ronpa tweets out some of the auditions that reached to the finals.

She doesn’t watch it, of course. She never does. But when she hears there’s going to be repeated talents this season, and there’s going to be an ultimate detective, again, she averts her eyes and winces.

/

She wakes up, one day, and there’s 5 missed calls from Naegi, 2 from Togami, and 1 from Asahina and Hagakure each. She squints, shrugs, and calls at least Naegi back.

He tells her that, after 6 years, Dangan Ronpa has concluded. He tells her, in a mix of excitement and horror, that the seasons ultimate robot, had blown up the set and they simply weren’t willing to get a new one.

She almost gets sent into anger, into glee, into hysterics, but she does not. She remains in a state of apathy, because that’s familiar to her.

She reads, on the news later, that this seasons Mastermind was a girl called Tsumugi Shirogane. Or, that was the name she was given by Dangan Ronpa, at least.

She recalls, faintly, that Tsumugi means woven silk, or something akin to that, and she laughs, if just a little, and mainly internally.

Enoshima had played them like a puppeteer with silk strings, stitched dolls in a circle, words and accents and personalities that were not true, and let them fall into something akin to despair, something related to it. But there is not such a thing as despair, not the version Team Dangan Ronpa had given them, spun to them like an ancient folklore story.

There was no such thing as aftermath, because Dangan Ronpa didn’t do aftermath. It did happy endings. Not aftermath.

It did stereotypical love stories, and it did traumatized teenagers, and it did so many things. But it did not do the aftermath that truly, really came with Dangan Ronpa.

She is a doll made for entertainment. She is not a stoic heroine. She is not a detective.

She is not Kyouko Kirigiri.


End file.
